Knocking around two years ago and then suspended in limbo indefinitely, The Wolf of Wall Street might be passing from Scorsese’s To-Do List and into Ridley Scott’s hands. Deadline maps the speed bumps:
The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort’s memoir of 1990’s stockbroker decadence, is back on the prowl. I’m hearing that the film is being put back together, with Ridley Scott in early discussions to direct Leonardo DiCaprio… Scorsese and DiCaprio nearly did the project together two years ago, but it got stalled in a tug of war between Warner Bros–where the project was developed–and Paramount, the latter of which gave Scorsese a rich overall deal. Instead, Scorsese and DiCaprio teamed on an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island.
The screenplay by Terry Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire) is a great read so it’s no surprise DiCaprio is loathe to let go of it. If the production proceeds, The Wolf of Wall Street would bookend nicely with Catch Me if You Can, updating Leo’s con-artist charms with far more more stinging relevance.
Belfort, who founded one of the first and largest chop shop brokerage firms in 1987, was banned from the securities business for life by 1994, and later went to jail for fraud and money-laundering, delivers a memoir that reads like fiction. It covers his decade of success with straightforward accounts of how he worked with managers of obscure companies to acquire large amounts of stock with minimal public disclosure, then pumped up the price and sold it, so he and the insiders made large profits while public investors usually lost. Profits were laundered through purchase of legitimate businesses and cash deposits in Swiss banks. There is only brief mention of Belfort’s life before Wall Street or events since 1997. The book’s main topic is the vast amount of sex, drugs and risky physical behavior Belfort managed to survive.
Anything to distract Ridley Scott from the “Monopoly Movie” is ok by me.
